


Rained the Whole Time

by bellepeppertronix



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Humor, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 04:45:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1291843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellepeppertronix/pseuds/bellepeppertronix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Scout thought the Engineer needed help moving some boxes, and then he'd have a favor in the bag.<br/>He was wrong.</p><p>Or, how the Scout becomes a half-unwilling participant in the Sawmill Base Spring Reading Program.<br/>(Engineer/Scout if you squint hard.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rained the Whole Time

It started when the Engineer asked him to help move some boxes.  
The Scout sulked, at first, because it was supposed to be an off day, and he was _not_ looking forward to any extra manual labor.

But he agreed, because the Engineer was always nice to him, and he figured that later, when he asked for a dispenser somewhere, the old man would have to owe it to him. Plus, he knew he’d need it. The site they were stationed at was a freaking _nightmare_.

They were supposed to be holding the point at Sawmill this month, which sucked, because Sawmill sucked. If he never had to hear the horrifying, meaty sound of the big saws ripping some poor jackass in half again, he’d sleep way better, he knew.

Plus, the place seemed like it was _never_ sunny. It had rained almost every day they’d been there, too, which had been hell at first, and now was mostly just annoying. 

He figured he’d never be dry, as long as he was there, and just gave up trying, but the other guys weren’t doing so well. 

The Spy was constantly griping about his fancy clothes smelling mildewy, and the Medic was waging a never-ending war against the mold that constantly seemed to keep creeping into the infirmary. 

The Heavy kept griping about how the dampness was terrible for Sasha’s barrels, and the Demoman would come to meals looking surly and annoyed, and would grumble about the moisture in the air throwing off his chemical formulas. 

If Sniper was annoyed, he never said anything--but that wasn’t unusual, because he was quiet most of the time, anyway. He _did_ seem to clean his rifles more often, though, grunting quietly to himself when he did.

So, when the Engineer asked him after breakfast one day to help with the boxes, he’d thought he’d needed help moving around spare parts, or whatever. Maybe they were starting to rust, the Scout figured. It made sense.

The Scout had figured he meant one or two boxes, and then he’d have a favor in the bag.  
He was wrong.

When he got to the shed where the Engineer kept his stuff, he found the old, weather-eaten wooden door already chocked open with a rock. He stepped around the door carefully, swearing when his sleeve caught on a nail.

“Ugh! Why’s everything around here, like, falling apart? Don’t they take care ‘a nothin’?” he asked.

The Engineer turned to him, chuckling. “Good afternoon to you, too, Scout.”  
The Scout’s eyes widened slightly as he got used to the dim light in the shed. 

The whole shed was full of boxes, stacks of them rising in rows and rows, all the way to the shed’s exposed ceiling beams. The Scout grimaced; he could see what were probably a couple decades’ worth of cobwebs just hanging up there, with fat spiders crouching in them.  
He shuddered; bugs weirded him right the hell out. 

He could tell which stacks belonged to the Engineer, and which weren’t his; the stacks along the left wall were all much neater, and they were all labeled with his neat, angular handwriting. 

All along the back wall, and to the right, the boxes were older, some of them with blooms of greenish-black mildew spreading over them. 

Some of the ones on the bottoms of the stacks were splitting at their sides, partially disgorging their insides all over the clammy concrete floor: rotten newspapers and sawblades and bent gears and random pieces of scary-looking old machinery, all eaten with rust. 

One stack of boxes, leaning at a drunken angle, had This Side Up arrows printed on them uselessly--they’d all been stacked sideways and obviously left there a long time, and they seemed to be full of gigantic rusty nails.  
He grimaced again. 

“So, uh. Which ones are we moving?” he asked, and looked from the ominous stacks of boxes to the Engineer and back again.

“Jest a few of the ones in this here stack. Only the ones I’ve labeled.” He patted the topmost book on a stack that was only three-deep. “Need to take ‘em inside the barn while it’s still dry out. Think ya can make it?”

The Scout scoffed. “This ain’t nothin’. Who do you think helped my Ma move, when our crabby asshole landlord hiked the rent? And the new place is a fourth-floor walk-up.”

He needed to stop bragging, he told himself. Or--no, but he needed to get better at it, so he could stop implicating himself for stuff like this.

For the next _forever_ , it seemed like, they moved boxes. Then they moved _more_ boxes. Then they moved _even more_ boxes. 

The Scout grunted, lifting his--what number _was_ he on? He didn’t know anymore, but his back hurt, his arms hurt, and his knees were starting to bug him, too. He shuffled awkwardly out of the shed and across the yard, towards the barn where the Engineer had set up shop. 

When he came back, the Engineer was studying the final box, which he’d managed to scoot forward, but not move. It was about the size of an old TV box--big and rectangular and awkward.

The Scout sighed, maybe a little louder than he needed to, and the older man turned to him with a bemused smile.

“Thanks, son. This is the last one, I promise.” the Engineer said.  
“Yeah, yeah.” He went to lift it, but found out that, even  
straining as hard as he could, he could only get one side an inch off the ground. 

“Geez, old man, what the hell do you have in these boxes? Bricks?”  
“Naw, son. Or, well, bricks of a sort. The kind you use to build up your mind.”

The Scout gave him a blank look. “You invented invisible bricks that are heavy as shit?”

And then the Engineer laughed. “No, boy! I mean books! The boxes are full of books. Now, let’s get this last one put up, and we’ll be done.” 

But the box was older than they’d thought, and when they went to lift it, the bottom tore out. Books went flapping everywhere, yellow-white pages fluttering as they hit the ground.

“Oh, darn it. Well, I guess this one’s had it. Help me get these up?”  
“Yeah, sure, okay.” 

They had the books mostly re-stacked in a new box, when the Scout picked up one that had landed really wrong, its cream-colored pages splayed and bent. The Scout brushed dust and cobwebs off its pages, shaking it so larger clumps of dust fell off. He turned it over in his hands, frowning as he read the title.

“’A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’? Ain’t this that book Bugs was reading, in that one cartoon? Anyway, yeah, right. I gotta bunch’a’ cousins who live out there. Ain’t nothin’ grows there except for weeds in parking lots.” The Scout paused a moment, then added, “Well, no--there’s that one really old gnarly nasty tree behind my grandma’s house. But it’s all rotten and dead’n’stuff. She keeps sayin’ she’s gonna have me an’ my brothers come over and help my cousins cut it down before it catches on fire or falls on the house,” the  
Scout shrugged. “I didn’t know you were into gardening’n’stuff, Engie.”

The Engineer snorted softly. “The scientific disciplines of studying and caring for trees are respectively called dendrology and arboriculture, son. And that’s not what that book is about.”

“Well, that’s dumb. Why the hell wouldja name a book something it ain’t even about?” The Scout turned the book over and flipped it open, grimacing a little.  
“Your book’s got, like, mold spots, Engie.”

“Ah, yeah,” the Engineer said. “Hopefully the rest ain’t too bad...that’s why I need to move ‘em. Gotta air ‘em out every now and again; this base is so darn cold and damp...”

The Scout thought it was kinda weird that anyone would keep that many books around in the first place--let alone old, dusty, moldy ones, but Engie was real smart, and he figured that all the smart people he knew were kinda weird--Engie and Medic and Demoman included--so he’d let it slide.  
“You gotta air books out?”

“Well, yeah! They’re like...” the older man paused, then continued, “They’re like pets, I suppose. You gotta take care of ‘em, and they’ll take care of you right back. Let ‘em have air when it’s damp, keep ‘em warm when it’s cold.” 

He put the last book--a well-loved book about the life of some chick named Nikola Tesla--on top of a much-dog-eared volume about the works of another chick named Marie Curie, and then clapped dust from his hands.

The Scout was still holding the book about the tree in Brooklyn--the fabled tree that he’d never seen--and he was staring at the titles of some of the other ones. He realized he didn’t even know what kinds of books you’d have to read to get as smart as Engie; probably, like, a whole library’s worth, and then some, he figured. Maybe these were just the ones he could carry with him.

The Scout hadn’t seen so many books in the same place since he went to the city library as a kid, clinging to his mom’s hand.

“Who’s Marie Curie?” the Scout asked, his nose wrinkled. “Sounds like poetry. Is it, like, flowery stiff old-lady poetry? How come you have it?”

The Engineer sighed, and the Scout actually started to feel like a dumbass, wishing, for once, that he could stop himself from running his mouth.

“Doctor Curie is the reason we have X-ray machines, and she discovered a couple elements previously not described on the periodic table. I’d’ve thought you kids would be learning about her in school,” the Engineer said.

Which made him feel even _dumber_ ; he hadn’t paid too much attention in school. His mind wandered. Sitting still for too long made his skin itch.  
He tried, “Elements? You mean, like, fire an’ stuff?”

The Engineer laughed again. “Try polonium and radium.”  
The Scout didn’t even know what those _were_ , but they sounded fancy and impressive, so he just raised his eyebrows a little, doubtfully.  
“She, um. Sounds cool. Do you know her?”

Because that’s what smart people did, right? Wrote smart books about science and stuff, and then gave those books to their friends, who were _also_ smart and into science. Right? Right! Or so the Scout was telling himself.

The Engineer only smiled. “I wish. She died quite a bit before I was born.”  
“Oh.” The Scout didn’t even know what to say to that; he was _just_ gearing up to ask the Engineer why he had so many books, when a thunder-crack overhead announced incoming rain.

“Better get the shed locked up. Any extra moisture at this point is just a recipe for disaster,” the older man said.  
Then he looked back at the Scout, and smiled again.

“Why don’t you just borrow that book, huh? See if it suits ya. If you don’t like it, you can just bring it back. How’s that sound?” he said.

The Scout started to protest, but the Engineer said, “No, no, no. I won’t take no for an answer. Just...consider it payment, for helping out. All right?”  
They hustled the last box across the yard quickly, the book bouncing on top of it.

Inwardly, the Scout cussed at himself for opening his trap. So much for one free dispenser. 

~

So that was how the Scout wound up with the book.

And he hated to admit it, but...it was pretty okay. It didn’t have any long, stupid words, and it wasn’t anything dumb like the soppy romances his mom and aunts passed around and tried to ‘hide’ from him and his brothers.

He read the first chapter in his room, sometimes getting up and pacing back and forth as he read, his free hand trailing along the wall without him noticing.

There was nothing else to do, he figured. He couldn’t even go out and practice batting or go for a jog--it was pouring outside, the kind of freezing downpour that made him really, really glad they weren’t stationed there during the winter. 

Even the radio kept crapping out--all the lightning fucking with the reception too much, he figured. So, yeah, reading was kind of an eggheaded thing to do, but whatever--like hell _he_ was going to try to go work out in the rain, and risk getting fried by lightning, or getting eaten by the _bears_ and _mountain lions_ they sometimes saw skulking around the site’s perimeter fences.

He was only reading because there was nothing else to do. Honestly.

He turned the page.

~

It was a weird feeling--thinking about something that wasn’t happening.  
He thought this absently, as a blast from his scattergun shattered the RED Pyro’s optic lenses. They toppled over like a sack of potatoes. A second later he rocketed past them, feeling little clods of mud sticking to his socks as he ran. 

Or, well, maybe he just wasn’t used to it.

He was worried about people who _weren’t even real_. Like, fuck that lady at the doctor’s office! It wasn’t their fault they were poor! Hell, _he_ knew what it felt like, to be so broke the water got turned off and you couldn’t wash up. It had even happened to them a couple of times, when he was a kid--usually immediately after his mom’s latest boyfriend left, and suddenly half the money supporting them left, too. 

He turned a corner, back into the big center barn, and skidded to a halt. The point was clear; the Engineer was busy upgrading a sentry, a dispenser hissing softly behind him.  
“Yo, Engie! Howya doin’?” he called, jogging over.

He draped himself over the dispenser, trying not to be obvious as he huffed more of the bluish healing mist than was strictly necessary.

“Aw, all right, I s’pose. Took down their Soldier a minute ago. I reckon we’ll hear from their Sniper in a bit, now that they know where-all I’m set up. You wanta run back and tell Doc and Heavy to head back up this way? I’ve got a feelin’ we’re gonna need the extra support.”

“Yeah, right, sure, okay. But hey, before I go, I gotta ask--what...what happens to the kids? Does their mom meet some rich guy and marry him? Or does the girl grow up and make it big in the movies? Or her brother?” the Scout asked. His head was starting to swim pleasantly; he stepped back, rolling his shoulders. All the fatigue just melted away, and he felt like he could run five miles and still be okay. Dispensers were awesome!

The Engineer smirked back at him, shaking his big wrench in the Scout’s direction. “Well, I’m mighty pleased you’re so taken with the book. But none of that! If you wanta know so bad, you’ll just have to read it.”

“Aww! But--come on, man! Engie, you gotta tell me, you just gotta!” Like hell he was gonna tell him _why_ \--he wasn’t about to admit to anyone that he wasn’t the best at _anything_ , much less that he read kinda slow. He figured it wasn’t his fault, though--the library was so far away from his mom’s place that you had to change buses _three times_ to get there! Who the hell had that kind of time and money to spend getting to a place that wasn’t a job?

Anyway, it was _definitely_ a weird thought. He kinda really wanted the day’s battle to be over, so he could go figure out what happened to the kids next.

“C’mon, man. Just gimme a little slack. All’s ya gotta do is just...ya know...gimme a hint.” he waggled his eyebrows in what he hoped was a suggestive way, but which only elicited another snort of laughter from the Engineer. 

“No. Now get, I’ve gotta finish the upgrades on this sentry before they get their second wave together!”

“Man--!” he complained, but the Engineer waved his wrench at him again, and he dodged out of the way cussing and laughing. He bounded away, to go look for the Medic and the Heavy.

~

It got worse. Two days later, when he was in the middle of a really interesting section, a piece of wood--a big chunk of the bottom of the windowsill, actually--fell right the fuck off, and when he tried to put it back on, the old wood splintered in his hands. So he was left with the cold air just kind of blowing in through a two-inch gap in the wall, with no way to stop it. 

A guy could only take so much before his teeth threatened to break from how much they chattered, all right? 

And so what if he, okay, _maybe_ stole a blanket from the Infirmary and was sitting huddled under it like a little old grandpa. He was _cold_ , for Chrissakes!

And it wasn’t like he could do anything else--the day’s fighting had even been ended early due to ‘inclement weather’, which was the Announcer’s fancy way of saying it was pissing down outside. So he had the book, and he was reading it, glad it was at least warm in the rec room, until--  
“Mon dieu, will wonders never cease! He is _reading_!” 

He jumped about a foot in the air, scrambling to catch the book that he’d been cradling between his blanket-covered knees. The book somersaulted through the air once before he managed to catch it, but he didn’t have time to stuff it anywhere, and the Spy continued, “I wasn’t even sure you _could_ read, with the way you ignore directional posts and hazard signs on the battlefield. Unless--” the malicious gleam in his eyes turned gleeful. “No! _you_ wouldn’t waste the time cutting out the pages of one book and pasting a different one between the covers. Unless you are merely doing the schoolboy trick of holding a comic book inside a textbook?” 

He was right next to the chair before the Scout could even do anything, chuckling his awful smug laugh, and the Scout halfway wanted to crack him across the head with the book.

But then, he thought, he’d get Spy brains and shit all over it, and probably ruin the nice paper, and even if he could finish reading it, there was no way he’d be able to return it to the Engineer like that.

“Sh--shut the fuck up, asshole!”  
“No, no, garcon! I am dying to know, what is it about, hmm? A treatise on the finer points of baseball? No. You have your magazines for that! What could it be? What _ever_ could it be?”  
“Fuck off or I’ll feed it to ya, on the side of a knuckle sandwich!” he snapped, swatting at the Spy’s intruding hands.

“Is it that American classic, ‘See Spot Run’? Rather a more handsome cover than I expected--” the Spy leered, and the Scout tried to pull away and accidentally leaned so far over the chair’s armrest that he fell on the floor, his legs sticking up in the air.

While the Spy stood there laughing, the Scout rolled over, wadding the blanket up under one arm. 

“Hey, fuck _you_ \--” he took a swing at the Spy, but the other man was too quick, and dodged out of the way. He was slick, too, the weasel, and he grabbed the book as Scout was stumbling past. The Scout dropped the blanket to grab the book with both hands, and they stood there playing tug-of-war with it, the Scout cussing louder and louder the longer the Spy held on.

The rec room door banged open, and the Demoman stood in the doorway, in a stained, singed canvas baker’s apron. His arms were white almost to the elbow with flour, and he had a murderous expression--well, more murderous than usual--on his face.

“What in the hell is all that bloody _noise_?” the Demoman demanded.  
“The boy has a dirty book, and refuses to share,” the Spy lied.  
“No I don’t! I mean--it ain’t a dirty book! It’s--it’s--GIVVITAME!” with a final jerk he pulled it away from the Spy and stormed out of the room, shouldering past the Demoman. 

His face was burning with embarrassment, but the Demoman let him go with only a sigh.

~

“Their sexy aunt can’t have babies, can she?” the Scout asked, one afternoon.  
It was almost two weeks later, but the weather hadn’t improved--which he was inwardly glad about, since it gave him more time to read. (Not that he’d ever admit that to anyone, and if anyone ever guessed, he’d make sure to introduce them to the business end of his bat.)

He was eating an apple, and leaning against a dispenser; the day’s battle hadn’t started yet, and he was trying to look casual to hide the curiosity that was eating him up inside. 

He went to cross his legs and banged his shin on the dispenser’s tray.  
“Fuck!” he doubled over, rubbing his leg, but a moment later the dispenser’s healing effect kicked in, and he leaned back against it. 

So much for looking casual. God, he felt like a huge rube.

“What?” the Engineer said. He was elbow-deep in his toolbox, rummaging for something. “Whose aunt?”

“The Nolan kids! You know, Francie and her kid brother. Neal, or whatever.” He bungled Neeley’s name on purpose; he didn’t need the Engineer making fun of him for being too into the book, on top of everyone else doing it.

The older man didn’t snicker or give him a weird look, though--he just pushed his hard-hat forward and scratched the back of his neck. After a moment, his face brightened. “Well, now, see, I’m not sure if I remember or not...”

The Scout slouched all over, flopping like a really dramatic little kid who wasn’t getting what they wanted.

“Man, Engie, come onnnnnn,” he whined.  
“I already told you, I’m not givin’ away a _thing_. You wanta know what happens, you’ve jest gotta read!”  
The Scout grumbled, but straightened up. 

“Fine. But this better not be one of those bullshit tearjerkers like in the soap operas, where she dies tryin’a have a baby. I _like_ their aunt.” He jabbed his finger at the Engineer for good measure, but couldn’t keep from mirroring the Engineer’s smile.

The battle-start siren started up somewhere. He adjusted his messenger bag and flicked the brim of his cap, the way he’d seen the Engineer do with his hardhat.  
“See ya ‘round, Engie!”

~

Things were getting kind of weird. Kind of _really_ weird.  
Like, there he was, hiding in the big pantry, using a bag of potatoes for a chair and a stolen flashlight for a lamp. Borrowed flashlight. It was just _there_ in a drawer; hell, nobody was going to miss it! 

He thought to himself that maybe that was what a junkie hiding their problem felt like--getting their fix in whatever weird place they could, so no one would notice. He remembered plenty of times, going to the bathrooms at his high school, and finding some poor jackass slumped in the next stall, nasty red pock-marks all up and down their forearms, glazed eyes half-lidded and skin gray as a corpse’s. 

It scared him--the thought of losing control of your body like that. Where did they _go_ , when they stuck themselves full of that shit? He’d heard guys, cool guys, swear it was like you could suddenly feel the earth underneath you, I mean really _feel_ it, maaaan, and you were so, so relaxed--it was like living in a dream.

Of course, he also knew about people who’d never come back down. There was this girl who’d lived in the same building as him--she was pretty, with big dark eyes and black hair. She reminded him of a bird, how quick she always was, and how pretty. 

Well, he’d watched as she went from having bobbed, curled Jackie-O hair to having long, ironed hippie-hair, and her eyes got bigger and bigger, but she kept getting skinnier and skinnier. 

He and one of his brothers used to talk to her; she said she was going away to Vassar to study women’s literature, before her eyes had begun to turn empty, glazed and hard as glass.

The last he’d seen of her was her carrying a suitcase up and down the street, with clothes hanging out of it. Her hair had been a snarled, ratty mess, and she’d been wearing several days’ worth of makeup, all pancaked in layers. 

She’d kept asking everyone when the bus was coming. 

She’d walked up and down the street, up and down the street, and she’d asked everyone when the bus was coming, and she’d done it every day for a month, before her mom started locking her in her room.  
He shuddered at the thought, and turned his attention back on the book. 

At least that kind of thing didn’t happen in books, he thought.

Then he thought of the Nolan kids’ dad, how he got the shakes when he didn’t have a bottle nearby. He swallowed, and then promptly felt both ashamed and ridiculous for feeling so worried about people who weren’t real. 

What the fuck did it matter, if fake people or their fake relatives got hooked on smack or bennies?  
Except.

Except, he couldn’t help but think, as he shifted on his uncomfortable makeshift potato-chair, it’d really suck if that happened to Francie and Neeley’s dad, or their aunt, or _them_. His stomach started to tighten with nerves. 

That wouldn’t happen though, right? Weren’t drugs, like, a new thing? And the book was old. Maybe they hadn’t even been invented yet.

He thought about their dad, though. He swallowed again.  
He turned the page.

When the flashlight’s beam stuttered a few times, he snatched it from where he’d wedged it between a box of grits and a really dusty can of coffee, mumbling cuss words under his breath. He shook it a few times.

The flashlight went back to working, but he’d barely gotten it stuffed back into its nook when he heard he kitchen doors open, and voices spilling in.

“Terribly glad y’decided to come help me, Sniper,” the Demoman was saying, “I don’t mind Spy’s company--”  
The Sniper snorted; the Demoman chuckled. 

“I don’t! He’s not such a bad sort, as long as you remember it’s his job to be a creep--but I’m a wee bit tired of the kind of food he likes cooking--you know, tiny portions with a wee dribble of melted butter off on one side--”  
“And god help you if you want to season it t’your own liking?” the Sniper cut in.

They both laughed. 

“Yeah, he’s a finnicky one, he is. Nearly fractured my wrist, once, when I went to reach for the salt. That time he made baked fish--” the Sniper was saying. The Demoman laughed, and said something the Scout didn’t catch.  
The Scout had begun sweating, his eyes going so wide they hurt. 

This was not _happening_! Why was there nowhere in the base that was _warm_ , where he could sit and mind his own business reading his own goddamned book?  
He heard the sink running. 

Maybe they were washing the dishes? He hoped. He remembered there was a huge pile off to the side of the sink. (There was a chore calendar, but half the time they ignored it, and the other half the time they were too tired and sore from being shot and stabbed and blown up and milled through Respawn to do anything but come back to base and sleep.)

He breathed a partial sigh of relief when he heard the soft clinking of someone stacking bowls and plates. Maybe he could get out of this still. Probably, he told himself. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal; all’s he had to to was wait.  
Right. Great plan.

He hunkered back down, and started to open the book again.  
The flashlight slipped from its nook and cracked him on the head.

He made a little suffocated noise of pain, and fumbled to catch it before it hit the floor. And he managed to do that, but not before knocking over an entire row of boxes of cornflakes.

For a moment he sat there in stunned silence, clutching the flashlight and the top of his (now aching) head. The book was cradled awkwardly in his lap.

“Bloody hell! What was that?”  
“Ach, probably a rat...”  
“ _A_ rat? Sounds more like a dozen!”

Footsteps, coming closer to the pantry door.  
The Scout’s heart was pounding, he could feel himself sweating, and Jesus, why the hell hadn’t he had the sense to pick a better hiding spot?  
He saw the latch lower as someone’s hand moved it from the outside.

“Careful! The ones here are right giant beasties. Best not to chance getting bit...”  
“Thanks, mate. You’re probably right.”

The Scout breathed a shuddering sigh of relief, before he heard someone cocking a gun, and he had a split second to jump off the potatoes and yell, “WAIT, NO!”

He was lucky it was the Sniper holding the gun, too, because everyone knew the Demoman had a quick temper and a quicker trigger-finger. 

“Damn et, boy!” the Demoman said.  
“The hell’re you doing hiding in the pantry? You’re just asking to get shot,” the Sniper said, more calmly. “Really ought to be more careful. You know there’s that rule now about Respawn being turned off between battles. Be a shame if we had to replace you.”

“Though not by much,” the Demoman muttered, his voice surly.  
“Yeah, yeah, whatever, okay, sorry, jeeze,” the Scout said. He was trying to edge to one side and slip past Sniper, the book wedged between his arm and his body.

Unfortunately for him, the Demoman’s one remaining eye was very sharp.  
“What’s that you’ve got there? Oho! Ohhh, no! You’ll not be takin’ _any_ boxes of food back to your room! The rats’re the size of terriers as it is!”  
“What! It ain’t! And I ain’t been sneakin’ no food, neither!” This was technically true; he didn’t take the food back to his room when he snacked.  
Mostly he just...went into the pantry or fridge and ate whatever he wanted, put back the (half-empty) container, and went on his happy way. 

“Then what’ve you got there?” the Demoman demanded, and reached for the book.

The Scout wriggled sideways, wishing they’d made the place with wider doorways, but before he could get a leg around and make a break for it, the Demoman’s eyebrows shot up.

“Is that one of the Engineer’s?”  
“What? --You mean--” he looked down at the book, becoming more and more embarrassed with every passing second. “Yeah, it’s--”

The Demoman crossed his arms. “Boy, I can abide a lot of things--bad habits included--but thievin’ ain’t one of ‘em. Now, you’d best take that back before he misses it, or there’ll be hell to pay--”  
“What?” the Scout goggled at him a moment.

The Sniper sniffed and adjusted his aviators. “Hope you haven’t been tearin’ out the pages to use as rolling papers. Truckie’s awful fond of his books.”  
Very suddenly, the Scout was really confused. He sputtered a moment before he managed to spit out, “Huh? No way, man, you know I don’t smoke!”  
“Then why d’you have it?”

The Scout, already overwrought, looked from the book to the Sniper’s face, then to the Demoman’s, and back again.

When no witty remark came to mind, he squawked, “’Cuz it’s a BOOK!”  
He ran for it before either of them could say anything.

~

The rain had let up, turning instead into a chilly drizzle. He stopped on the doorstep to clench his teeth before untucking his shirt and stuffing the book underneath it, and then re-tucking it messily. 

With the book stowed, and rubbing against his undershirt in a scratchy, faintly pleasant way, he stormed out of the base proper. He went across the yard, where a cold, fitful wind was rustling through the scraggly tall grass that grew up between the boards and the rocks. 

It was almost kinda nice, out in the back: there was the waterfall and the log-bridge, but it was already cold as hell and even though the waterfall was kinda (okay, really) nice to look at, he didn’t feel like dealing with the extra dampness from the spray.

Plus, Engineer would probably break his legs if he dropped the book and got it wet. Or worse, never let him borrow another book again.  
It was a weird thought.

He trudged towards one of the smaller barns, the book still clamped against his chest, blowing into his hands to warm them.

Inside--well, that was a loose term, since the barn was missing two walls--at least there was no wind. But it was still cold and he wasn’t about to go back inside, grab a jacket, and then come back _outside_ to be slightly less cold while he read.

Even if it _would_ have been way more peaceful.  
He growled in annoyance.

“Why the fuck is this so damn _hard_! Nobody on this damn base pays _any_ attention to me at _any other time_ , and now allova sudden, I can’t get ‘em off me? What the FUCK!” and he viciously kicked at a clump of dirt that had accumulated on the barn floor. It exploded into powdery sand and pebbles; he felt a tiny bit better.

He knelt. From where he was, he could just see the windows in the weird little not-loft over the barn where the point was. A bunch of the windows were already broken; he figured he might as well clean out the rest of the panes.

Carefully, he pulled the book out and set it on top of one of the crates that were everywhere.

“They’re gonna be all, ‘Oh, Scout, you’re acting like a giant _nerd_!’ an’ then I’m gonna haveta bust their skulls. I get no _respect_ ,” the throw was perfect, and he watched with satisfaction as the window shattered, tinkly broken glass sounding like music to his ears. “I mean, abso-fuckin-lutely NO--RESPECT--!” two less-than-perfect throws; the rocks clumped dully against the side of the building, and bounced off.

A third rock bounced off the side of the barn.

He turned around and a strangled shriek of horror made it halfway out of his mouth before he saw the Pyro crouching there, a few feet behind him.

“Oh, jeeze! I thought--I thought--” he swallowed. “I thought you was somebody else! Shit, don’t go sneakin’ up on people like that! You’re lucky I didn’t have a gun or one of bat on me, I mighta accidentally put you in a world’a hurt...”

The Pyro didn’t say anything, just scooted closer, their knuckles braced against the floor. He could see mud streaking both their gloves up to the wrist.

He could also feel the hairs on the back of his neck starting to stand up.  
“How--how long were you there, anyway?”

The Pyro still didn’t respond. Just scooted a tiny bit closer. 

The Scout could see that, though they didn’t have their flamethrower, they were still carrying their axe--the plain fire-axe, though he could see its spiked part was covered with little clods of mud.

“Were you, like, really just listening to me yelling?”  
Still no response. They inched closer.

The Scout’s skin was itching all over, the hairs behind his ears and all down his neck going haywire. 

“Uh, okay, so, you know what, I’m just gonna. Um. Go.”  
And, still feeling the Pyro’s eyes hot on his back, he grabbed the book and hurried away. 

When he got halfway back to the base and turned around to look, the Pyro was gone.  
He shuddered and triple-checked the lock on his room door, when he got there. 

~

Even bundled up in two shirts, his good coat, two pairs of socks, and both his pairs of pajama pants, his room was still freezing. Better there than anywhere else, though, he figured. He’d even stuffed the crack with soggy newspapers he’d found caught in the fence, but they didn’t do much good.

He huddled over the book, his blanket drawn up to his ears, and flipped the page.  
(It was kind of corny to think about later, but he really did notice the cold less, when he was reading.)

~

A few days later, he found the kitchen-slash-mess hall mercifully empty. It was after battle-hours, and everyone was sitting around nursing whatever injuries they’d had when the day’s matches had ended.

The Scout had been having unusually good luck lately, and for once had survived an entire battle (relatively) unscathed. A little singed, sure, but when did _that_ never happen? 

So, when he found the mess empty, he was more than happy to run back to his room and grab the book (taking extra cautions to hide it under his shirt, this time) and then slinking in there like he was planning on raiding the fridge. Which, he thought, he might or might not do later.

Anyway, he slid the book onto the table and was about to sit down, when it occurred to him that he _really_ didn’t want a repeat of the incident with the Demoman and the Sniper. So he dragged a chair from the table and used it to jam the door closed.

Finally finished, he sank down into the last chair, rubbing his hands together and blowing into them to get the feeling back. 

The kitchen was the warmest room in the base, but even there it was cool, with the stove and all the appliances off. There was a faint, sweetish smell of cold coffee in the air, and the even fainter odor of burnt bread: breakfast smells, from what felt like a thousand years ago.

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then cracked open the book.  
It couldn’t have been that long before all the racket started. Someone was banging around outside, yelling. He heard lots of voices, doors opening and shutting, footsteps moving quick over the creaky wooden floors. 

For a split second, he thought that maybe the RED Spy had gotten into the base; but then it occurred to him that he’d seen their Pyro take him down a bunch of times, so the poor bastard was probably back in the RED base, sitting in a bathtub full of ice, covering all his exposed skin with burn cream.

A particularly loud door-slam made him sigh and roll his eyes; maybe _their_ Spy was fucking with people again. They _still_ hadn’t found Engie’s other glove.

He went back to the story. Things were getting really good again, and--  
Another bang as a door opened. He gritted his teeth when he realized he’d just read the same line twice, and was just going back to the top of the page when someone tried to push the kitchen door open. Through a crack, he could see the side of the Heavy’s scowling, annoyed face.

“THERE you are hiding!” The Heavy bellowed.  
“What!” the Scout yelped. He jumped up, trying to hide the book.

He was too slow, though, and he watched as the Heavy body-checked the door open so hard the chair behind it literally crumpled, old wood cracking like kindling.

“Aww, what--! Look what you just did! What the--”  
“Leetle man should not play pranks!” the Heavy said, at what was probably normal speaking volume for him. 

The Scout had enough time to think that he was really fast--way faster when he wasn’t lugging his minigun around--and then the Heavy was on him.

He picked the Scout up by the back of his vest and held him so his toes barely touched the ground, while the Scout swore and twisted around, trying to get loose.

“What the HELL, man! I ain’t done nothin’!”  
“I have been looking EVERYWHERE for book! Is very unkind trick to play!” the Russian continued shouting, and took the book from Scout’s clutching hands as easily as taking candy from a baby. No, really, that was how the Scout felt.

“That’s--hey! Givvitame! GIVE IT BACK TA ME!” the Scout hollered, but the Russian merely dropped him and made a scoffing noise.

The Scout kept trying to get the book back from him, with no success, because the big Russian kept swatting him away like a bear with a bluejay.

He flipped the book open one-handed, frowning, and muttered, “Scout had better not have moved my bookmark...”  
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKIN’ ABOUT? THAT AIN’T EVEN YOUR BOOK!” the Scout screeched.

The Russian’s big brows knit together for a long moment, before he looked back at Scout. His face went from annoyed to blank to apologetic.  
“Ah! Is not my Puskin volume...hm. Am sorry, leetle comrade!”  
“Pushk--I’LL FREAKIN’ PUSH _YOU_ OFFA THE FREAKIN’ WATERFALL, IF YOU PUT YER MITTS ON MY STUFF AGAIN!” the Scout barked, but the Heavy only shrugged as he handed the book back.  
“So sorry to have bothered you. I will leave you to your reading.”

He turned and headed for the door, but the Scout was faster, getting between him and the door, panic fueling his actions.

“Hey--hey! You’d--you better not say NOTHIN’, okay?”  
The Heavy gave him a weird look, but shrugged. “Leetle Scout is not stealing, is quiet, and is, how you say, ‘out of everyone’s hair’. Why should I care what he does?”

“But you can’t _tell_ nobody you saw me, okay?” the Scout said. Then, when he realized he probably sounded like a desperate sap, he added, roughly, “I been bothered too damn much already!”

“All right. I will not tell anyone.” the Heavy looked down at the splinters of what had once been a chair, with remorse on his face.

“If you promise not to tell what I did to chair.”  
“Done deal. Jeeze. Now willya leave me the hell alone?” 

“Of course. So sorry.” So saying, the big Russian lumbered away, leaving the Scout tugging at his clothes to get them to fit right again. 

Anyway, the kitchen felt wrong, after that. _he_ felt wrong--like he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to.

He sighed, annoyed, and kicked the rest of the chair fragments into a heap by the trash-can. He sat back down to read, but kept twitching and jumping every time someone walked past the door. 

Still, by the time Spy came back in, his sleeves already rolled up, and tying his fancy white chef’s apron on, the Scout blinked up from the book and had just enough time to snatch it off the tabletop and zip his vest around it.

“Do I want to ask why it is that you are sitting here in the dark?” the Spy asked. He flicked on the lights, and the Scout realized he _had_ been squinting really hard in the pale bluish-gray evening light that had been coming through the kitchen windows. 

“None’a’your business, jerk,” he said. He didn’t have the spare mental energy to put any heat behind his words. Instead, he wandered out of the kitchen, wondering if he’d get in trouble if he took the pieces of the crushed chair back to his room and used them to make himself a fire.

~

“So this guy who’s into their aunt,” the Scout asked the Engineer, a few days later. “He a decent guy? Or is he a shitbag?”  
“Boy, you keep askin’ me, and I keep tellin’ you--”  
“I _knew_ it! So what’s his problem, huh? But it won’t be booze, ‘cuz their dad’s already an alkie, an’ they never have more than two per story. So what is it? Does he gamble? Is it the races, cards, or dice?”

The Engineer sighed. “He doesn’t gamble.”  
The Scout’s naked outrage was almost comical. “You mean _he’s_ an alkie, too? _damn_ it, Engie!”  
“Now, now! I didn’t say that!” the older man said.

The Scout started to ask him something else, but before could talk, a bullet whizzed past him and shattered the glass of the dispenser’s faceplate. He swore and took off running, yelling, “SORRY, ENGIE! LATER!” over his shoulder as he went.

~

The Medic was humming quietly, rearranging his medical texts again, when he found it.

It was most definitely not one of his own books, though at first glance it was easy to see how that mistake could possibly be made. The book in question was a handsome volume, bound in black leather, with gilt lettering on the spine. His Cyrillic was atrociously rusty, so it was with great difficulty that he made out that it was apparently a volume of something written by Aleksandr Pushkin.

He sighed again and turned to put the book on his desk--on top of _another_ book belonging to the Heavy, which he’d found in the file drawer where he hid his butterscotch candies. 

He tutted softly. Honestly, that man would lose his _head_ if it weren’t attached to his shoulders. 

He hesitated a moment, because the thought was quite an intriguing one--not something he’d try on his beloved Heavy, of course, but perhaps the obnoxious Soldier or even the Spy, who, after all, would not really be missed on the battlefield...but no, he told himself. He set the book on top of the other and sighed.

When he wasn’t finding shells or casings or tiny barrel-cleaning brushes or metal files that the Russian had left behind--often in his otherwise-neat cabinets, very often in unused beakers and squirreled away in drawers--he was finding the other man’s books. The first volume was some hideously dry thing about weight balancing to make guns more efficient--probably the sort of thing the Heavy would take and talk over with the Engineer, whenever they decided to have a drink.

That, he thought, was probably where the Russian was now; sitting with the Engineer, getting drunk and blathering on about rifling and whether or not it was ever appropriate to lengthen the barrels on multi-round ballistic weapons. They might have even tried to create another bizarre minigun-sentry hybrid.

He frowned, but then smirked in spite of himself. They had been so proud! The...creation had been an unwieldy mess, but the Russian was a very cute, excited, friendly drunk. A rare feature in a man, the Medic told himself.

So, hoping the two of them were pleasantly liquored-up, but not too far-gone, he picked up the two books and set out to find them.

He pulled on his wool overcoat, dug around for his winter gloves, hating how clammy and cold the wet weather made his latex ones feel, but also loath to have his hands bare in a place where, on average, a person encountered at least six sharp, exposed, rusty nails per square foot.

With the books tucked under one arm, he left the Infirmary, tugging up his overcoat’s collar against the chill in the corridor.

He was about to cross the rooftop bridge between the base proper and the barn when he heard the noise.

Along with the wind, which was forever sighing and whistling and slinging rain sideways at them, he heard a very soft, but very human sound--a wet sniffle.

He stiffened. Had the enemy Spy sneaked into their base? Was he hiding somewhere, cloaked, and was his cold-induced illness now betraying him?  
The Medic swore inwardly. He’d not thought to bring a single weapon!

For a moment, panic seized him. He still remembered his first encounter with the RED Spy--which had left him with a dislocated shoulder, a broken collarbone, a badly-bruised trachea and a severe concussion. It was not a process he relished the thought of repeating.

Just a glance, he told himself. If he saw the telltale shimmer on the air--but, of course, if he _saw_ it, then it would certainly mean the Spy had already seen him, and it was too late. 

He stood rooted to the spot, frowning and sweating, until he heard loud laughter come rolling out of the barn. 

The Heavy’s voice, the words lost to distance, and then he saw a blue paper airplane describe a lazy arc in the air before he heard the telltale double-beep of a sentry sighting a threat, and bullets shredded the plane into confetti in midair.

He relaxed almost instantly. There was no way anything could have gotten past _them_ , even if they were drunk.

The noise repeated itself, along with a papery rustling sound. 

Feeling emboldened by the Heavy and the Engineer being so obviously nearby, he took two steps out onto the landing, and very carefully peeked around the corner.

The Scout was sitting on the covered ledge that overlooked the front of their base, his feet hanging out over the railing. His back was to the doors.

He was hunched over something, and every now and again he would wipe his face with the back of his wrist.

The Medic hesitated, suddenly feeling very cold despite his woolen overcoat.

He knew the Scout had several older brothers and a single mother; it occurred to him that anything could have happened to any of them. Perhaps the boy had just received some bad news.  
He wondered what it was. 

In the end, though, he also knew that the Scout was nothing if he was not proud. Cocksure and arrogant, certainly, but even without access to the young man’s medical files, it was easy enough to see that he was still fresh out of boyhood. Nineteen may have been legally classifiable as ‘adult’--at least, as far as the Builders’ League was concerned--but for all intents and purposes he knew it was the last leg of teenager-hood.

He was also very keenly aware of how much of the Scout’s paychecks he sent home--most of his clothes were threadbare, with the exception of his shoes. And yet he never asked any of them for extra money, never complained about pay, and certainly never solicited pity.

The Medic sighed, very softly. He stepped back around the corner and went downstairs, taking another way outside.

~

The Engineer was wrapping up for the day, cleaning his tools and then replacing them in his big toolbox. In one hand he held a much-smudged chamois, and in the other he held a tiny wrench, which he was carefully wiping the grease off of. 

When the entire set was clean, he settled them in their slots in one of the toolbox’s many drawer inserts, neat as Russian nesting dolls.  
He sighed, satisfied. 

Outside, it was raining, drizzling with intermittent heavier showers that came and went in waves. The last of a particularly long shower was still pattering pleasantly, seductively off the roof, and he was thinking good thoughts about mugs of cocoa with good-sized splashes of nice French coffee liqueur, and beds and sketchbooks of blueprint concept drawings.

While he was wringing grease off his own hand, he wondered what Spy--or possibly the Demoman--had made for lunch, there was a knock on the barn’s door.  
“Come on in, it’s unlocked!” he called.

And the door slid open to reveal the Scout standing there, shoulders rounded, looking like nine miles of bad road. His shoulders were spattered damp from the rain outside, and his socks were gray with damp. His eyes were bloodshot and his nose was raw, and if the Engineer wasn’t a practical man, he’d start making assumptions.

But he _was_ a practical man, and, he liked to think, a polite one. He said nothing about the young man’s appearance.

“Oh! Well, how are ya, Scout? Wasn’t expecting to see you today. S’pose it’s good we’ve been having so many inclement-weather days; makes gettin’ everything ship-shape so much easier.” he said, keeping his tones light.

Something was wrong. He just wasn’t sure what.

“Why didn’t you tell me their dad dies?” the Scout whispered.  
“What?” then it occurred to him that the boy was referring to the book, clutched in both hands like it was made of gold, or glass. 

The Engineer tugged on his coverall straps, then said, “Well, to be honest--that’s not the kinda thing you spoil, about a book like that.”

The Scout looked down at the floor, at his feet--his posture strangely quiet, oddly humble. He shuffled into the Engineer’s workshop and stared down at the stool beside the Engineer for a long moment, before the Engineer sighed softly and nodded at the stool.

“You can set down and rest yourself for a minute, if you want,” he offered.  
“Yeah. Thanks, man...” the Scout said.

And he sat down, and was uncharacteristically silent for so long that the Engineer cleared his throat and shifted in his seat.

After a long moment, he said, “I thought he was gonna get it together. You know? He was...” he swallowed, and shifted on the stool. “And then their mom! And she was...and, but then--” he looked up for the first time, gesturing with one hand. “I never knew it was like that,” he said, wonderingly, after a moment.

“You think...I mean, I was the littlest, so it was probably me--but...you think all moms have, like, a favorite kid?” he continued, picking at his knuckle bindings.  
“I reckon I don’t know...I don’t suppose all people are like that.”

The Scout looked over, out the window, at the sky. The air seemed white, the sky was so gloomy and overcast, and there weren’t even really clouds, just haze as far as the eye could see, and fog so thick the trees were reduced to gray silhouettes fading paler and paler with the distance. 

The Scout started talking again. “I mean, I--I gotta say, I’m no egghead or nerd--” he glanced back at the Engineer and looked embarrassed a second, and fidgeted some more with his binding. “...No offense! But I, ah, I wasn’t...too into school. Maybe ‘cause, like, all the books they had us read was so boring, you know? But...I didn’t even know there was books...like this one. About stuff like this, I mean. About stuff that’s _real_. And...I guess I never even thought that stuff like...like what I had to deal with as a kid--I guess I never thought it meant nothin’ to nobody, you know? I mean...I didn’t even know that somebody could make it...” he looked back out the window, then down at his feet, his fingers picking at his bandages. The Engineer had never seen anyone so obviously searching for the right words. 

Finally, the Scout mumbled, “I didn’t even know somebody could make it special. Like it was important.”

The Engineer wasn’t sure what to do. The Scout wasn’t the kind of person you could just touch--an arm around his shoulders, even a pat on the back, was too much for his fragile ego, and the Engineer knew it. 

“There’s more to books than you’d think. Sometimes...sometimes a story’s all we’ve got to take us through the bad times. Sometimes a story’s the only way out of a bad place.” the Engineer kept his voice slow, and gentle.

The Scout made a wet scoffing noise and scrubbed his nose with the back of one hand. “Yeah, well, it ain’t the kinda thing you did, if you was a kid from where I was from.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” the Engineer said. He paused a moment, then added, “And, well...you’re not there anymore, are ya?”

The Scout glanced at him, but his gaze flicked back to the floor a moment later.  
“No,” he said. He fell silent, his eyes moved to look out the window.

Eventually the younger man just heaved a big sigh and stood up, pulling the book out of his satchel. He ran his hand over the cover, sighed again, and then held it out to the Engineer.

“So, uh. I guess...thanks for letting me borrow it. It was real nice of you, an’ stuff.”  
“Well, sure, Scout. Anytime.”

The boy nodded, and walked to the barn doors. He had his hand on the latch when he turned and spoke again. He was fiddling with his bandages again, his eyes going everywhere but to the Engineer’s face.

“And...I mean...if you ever, y’know...need help moving more books, I’d be happy to do it. Y’know. To make sure they don’t get moldy or nothin’. Don’t call Soldier or Demoman or nobody, you can just call me, so’s you can get it done quick! Right?” the Scout said.  
The Engineer didn’t hesitate a moment.

“You know...I reckon I might build some shelves. I’ll need someone to help out with putting up all the books. If you’re up to it.”  
The Scout stuck out his chest. “I ain’t scared’a no hard work, old man. ‘Sides, you know you need the help.”

And then the Engineer laughed. “Thank you kindly for the offer, Scout. I’ll keep it in mind,” he nodded, and bent back over the diagrams he was working on.

The Scout was halfway down the rickety, creaking wooden steps when he half-turned and said, “And, uh...maybe...you could let me borrow another one. For pay, y’know.”

He was going to say no, the Scout thought. He was going to say no, that was a one-time thing, why would anyone just _let_ you borrow their books, the library was all over you like a cheap suit if you kept one of _their_ books for, like, a day too long, so why would one person let you just _borrow_ theirs like it was no big deal?

Instead, though, the Engineer tipped back his hardhat, a small smile on his face.  
“I think that sounds like a fair deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from a Shlohmo song of the same title.


End file.
